The new 'Halo' won't change the world, but it is the best 'Halo' in years

Not so long ago, Microsoft was thinking of canning the
long-running video game franchise.

"People felt like, Let’s get another 'Halo' or two out, and it’s
the end of the franchise," franchise lead Bonnie
Ross told
Bloomberg Businessweek in a recent interview.

Ross is the George Lucas of the "Halo" universe, and she's
tasked with keeping the blockbuster series alive after nearly 20
years of "Halo" games, a split with the series' original
developer (Bungie Studios), and a rocky launch for Microsoft's
newest game console, the Xbox One.

For Ross and her studio at 343 Industries, the pressure to
succeed has never been greater.

So, does "Halo 5" succeed?

In many ways, "Halo 5: Guardians" — this year's big "Halo" game,
and the first major "Halo" release on the Xbox One — does indeed
succeed.

It's got gorgeous visuals running at a breakneck
60-frames-per-second (technical jargon for "the animations
look really smooth"). It's just as fun on a
minute-to-minute basis as any previous "Halo" game. It's also got
a brand new multiplayer mode that dramatically changes the scope
of playing "Halo" online.

Microsoft

And in many ways, "Halo 5: Guardians" fails as spectacularly as
it succeeds.

The game's story is convoluted and poorly-told through comically
earnest dialog — dialog flooded with references that
only the most loyal of "Halo" lore nerds will understand (I
should know, I'm of their ilk).

The game's main boss is no fun at all and shows up over and over
and over. "Halo 5's" greatest moments are often in the form
of cutscenes — unplayable moments of cinematic video —
rather than played by you, the player.

"Halo 5: Guardians" is a game of highs and lows not unlike the
rollercoaster of highs and lows that is the Xbox One game
console. Are you willing to put up with the unfortunate
low points in "Halo 5" for some delightful high
points?

The Peaks

The good news is that the highs are very high.

I was immediately struck by how much prettier the world of "Halo"
looked this time around. It's a more fully realized universe than
ever, with vegetation and animals and ancient structures and all
sorts of other pretty stuff to gawk at.

The "Halo" series has always been one to impress with the places
its main story campaign takes players, and "Halo 5" beyond keeps
up the tradition. As ever, I found myself straying from the
objective at hand to simply walk around and take the atmosphere
in.

Sometimes it's a barely hanging on human colony on a planet
far from Earth:

Microsoft

Sometimes it's an intricate alien cavern full of secrets and
angry enemies:

It's usually alien. In case it weren't already clear, "Halo" is
primarily about killing aliens on alien planets.

And it's not just setpieces like those seen above. The action of
"Halo 5: Guardians" is just as fast as it is gorgeous.

It's also quite varied — maybe more than ever
before.

You're just as likely to be shooting aliens on foot as you are to
be driving an SUV with a gatling gun on the back, to say nothing
of the many aircrafts strewn throughout "Halo 5."

Though it may not always be clear why you're
shooting this bad guy or that bad guy, it's almost always a good
time.

Main story aside, "Halo 5: Guardians" has a robust multiplayer
component as well. All the usual game modes are there:
deathmatch (dubbed "Slayer"), capture the flag, king of the hill,
etc. And all of that stuff is just as good as it's been in
previous games, but let's get to the real meat of the "Halo
5" multiplayer experience.

There's a major new addition to the usual online multiplayer
in "Halo 5": it's called "Warzone."

"Warzone" is basically "Halo" mashed up with "League of Legends,"
and it's a lot better than that may sound to you.

One of the massive
"Warzone" multiplayer maps.Microsoft

Like in "League of Legends," two teams are tasked with
destroying the other team's "core" — essentially a large cylinder
in the enemy team's base that will take a beating before
being destroyed — and there are a wide variety of things your
team can do to sway the overall match in your team's favor. Your
team can capture various bases, for instance, which enables you
and your teammates to restart after death much closer to your
objective.

In practice, this plays out over relatively long stretches of
time (15 minutes or more), with a whole variety of variables
playing in to who eventually wins. Will your team defeat a
certain enemy first, which grants you a massive point advantage
over the other guys? Barring one of the two teams taking out the
others' "core," reaching 1,000 points is another win condition.
But maybe while your team is focusing on taking out that enemy,
the opposing team is stealing one of your bases, granting them a
strategic location for respawing. It's a lot to grasp, and I've
just barely scratched the surface, but that's truly exciting in
this case.

The new Warzone game mode plays into the enormously popular
eSports world in smart ways: It's easy to imagine an arena full
of people watching massive Warzone battles play out, with two
teams of highly organized players carefully trying to outsmart
the other.

Warzone is a delightful mix of strategy and teamwork and
action, and it helps to freshen up an otherwise unchanged, yet
still very solid, multiplayer component. It's one of the
highlights of the "Halo 5" experience, if not its greatest
strength.

The Valleys

As hinted at earlier, the game's story is nigh incomprehensible.

"Halo 5's" story has been marketed as "the longtime series
protagonist, a supersoldier named 'Master Chief,' has gone rogue,
and your squad of supersoldiers has to find him and uncover 'the
truth.'"

That's sort of what happens? I guess?

Early on in the game, the main character learns that his AI
partner — thought dead, named "Cortana" — is still alive and
"living" in some far flung part of the galaxy. For some reason
that's never made clear, Master Chief is ordered by humanity's
leadership to return instead of going after her. He disobeys that
order and goes off to find Cortana. This causes the human
leadership to send a crew of other soldiers after him. In the
process, everyone kills a ton of aliens. Like,
thousands.

One of the many aliens
you're going to kill if you play "Halo 5:
Guardians."Microsoft

That's basically the whole story of "Halo 5: Guardians."
Spoilers! Joking aside, there's some other hints at potentially
interesting characters and plot points that largely fall off.
Everything is in service of "keep moving forward and shooting
things." Which is fine, because shooting things is kind of
the raison d'être of "Halo." I just wish the overwrought,
ultra-self serious dialog would offer the slightest bit of levity
every now and again.

A large portion of this not-so-great dialog is spent during
cutscenes — the non-playable films full of exposition that games
so often use to deliver major plot points you might miss during
gameplay. And while the cutscenes were always very impressive to
look at, more often than not they were frustrating stand-ins for
what could've been exciting game moments — moments I could have
been playing instead of watching, in so many
words.

There's one cutscene early in the game that has the game's main
team of supersoldiers (known as "spartans") running full speed
down a snow-covered mountain after dropping to the planet from
space, blasting aliens and punching aliens and just generally
messing up aliens in the process. It's thrilling,
and totally unplayable.

The game literally starts with a massive tease. That's cold,
"Halo 5!"

Should You Play It?

Maybe! Yes! No! Not so helpful, I know.

It's genuinely hard to say with "Halo 5," and a lot is going to
come down to how much you're willing to forgive. Are you okay
with relatively mindless dialog that serves to drive relatively
fun, if somewhat repetitive gameplay? Are you willing to invest
the serious time that the new "Warzone" multiplayer mode will no
doubt require of players who want to be competitive? Are you okay
buying this game at full price knowing that multiplayer may have
major functional issues at launch (the last "Halo" game had
broken multiplayer for months)?

"Halo 5: Guardians" doesn't feel as revelatory as the original
"Halo" and its sequel did, but it's certainly the best looking,
best playing "Halo" game I've played in years. And for me,
that's enough.